The lady with the Pet Dog (Chekhov)

After reading The Lady with the Pet Dog the first thing that came to my mind was mid-life crisis. It also reminds me of how many believe that romance, in the true sense of the word, is dead. Many people marry into loveless engagements in the modern world, and many are simply infatuated with people because they see things in them which they do not see in the world. I feel as though Dmitri sees in Anna elements of the world which he has either ignored, or believed did not exist. However at the same time, Chekhov portrays Yalta as this wild chance. Sometimes things all come together at the perfect time, momentary Utopia and peace. Though they are rare and chance happenings they can reorganize someone’s thoughts, provide new clarity in the moment; and when they are gone the memory of them is like a plague, a shadow cast over a life of understanding. I believe there is a moment in time in everyone’s life, where just for a moment everything makes sense. For Dmitri this moment is Anna. Though Dmitri appears to be a completely mundane character hardly worth analysis, the fact that he clings to this memory makes him interesting. Many of us desire things and are too afraid to allow that desire to consume us, Dmitri is not. The average person has this passing with fate and forgets about, or buries it in order to continue their lives they way they think they are supposed to be living them the fact that he does not makes him a very intriguing character to me.